Classifying Functions Served by websites
Mukesh Bhargava

The websites are pliable "putty" that can be molded into a variety of functions to enhance traditional business efforts. It is interesting to see the evolution of our thinking about its capabilities. Starting with comparisons to different media, we have now moved to examining the value of the networks (Sawhney and Parikh, 2001; Aldrich, 1999; Shapiro and Varian, 1999).

The hunger site (http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1) shows how a website can help achieve these goals. First, it serves as a live brochure for the project. There is an annual report, a detailed brochure of the services, and a record of achievements - all arranged so visitors can choose the information they want. Second, the site is a medium and a channel, delivering a number of people who could potentially link to the sites of the donating agencies. Finally, it is also linked to other sites with similar objectives, forming the equivalent of a marketplace linking agencies and potential customers. Thus, this one site shows how the websites have multiple roles: a medium, a channel, a store front, and a "market maker" (Hanson, 1999).

A number of researchers have attempted to categorize website functions (e.g., Hanson, 1999; Sheth et al, 2001; Quelch and Klein, 1996). Their taxonomies are typically derived a priori, with little empirical grounding. Table 1 shows some ways in which functions might be grouped. Our contribution is to study the functions empirically as well as theoretically, to ground research in website functions in the state of practice.

The research plan to select a few organizations, and study their goals for their websites both with in-depth interviews and detailed content analyses. We hope to learn (1) what typical goals are, and (2) whether those goals are reflected in site content, and (3) how their goals and site content changed together over time. The last tracks the organizations' learning processes, that is, how their initial experiences affected their subsequent decisions. We expect this detailed analysis to reveal patterns in goals and corresponding site content. We plan to extend our content analysis to a larger number of sites to see if the same content is present. In summary, our eventual goal is to classify website functions and identify best "internet" practices for various organizations.